Pál Erdős

Erdös is arguably one of the greatest and most prolific mathematicians ever known. He contributed to such diverse fields as geometry, number theory, probability theory, set theory, and analysis. He is best known for his work in combinatorialmathematics. Over 1500 (many joint) papers were published during his lifetime.

He was somewhat of an itinerant.
He would go from mathematicians house to
matheaticians house, stay and work for a few weeks and
then move on. It is said of him that all
of his worldly possesions fit into two bags.

To say that something was "close to The Book" was the highest
praise Erdös reserved for a proof. Just after Erdös died, Joel
Spencer, a frequent co-author with him and his usual "roof"
(place to stay) when he was in the NYC area, told me that Erdös was fond
of saying:

Both biographies of Erdös report that he was using speed (amphetamine) throughout his life. He received it from a Hungarian doctor who was a friend. He slept only a couple of hours every night.

In 1979, his friend and mathematician Ronald Graham offered a $500 bet, challenging him to go without drugs for 30 days. Erdös met the challenge, but later complained bitterly that the progress of mathematics had been held up by this silly little bet.

Though he is widely respected for being an extraordinary mathematical thinker, Erdos was also something of a freak, if his biographies are to be believed. He was apparently incapable of many of lifes simplest tasks: Fellow mathematician and friend Ronald Graham recounted tales of Erdos (pronounced "Air-dish") asking for help trimming his toe nails, or having such difficulty opening a can of tomato soup with a can opener that he spilt most of it all over the kitchen floor. Erdos himself told of how he shocked himself by learning late in life to butter his own bread, stating: "It wasn't that hard."

Also of note were his sarcastic ideas of God. As mentioned above, according to Erdos, God possessed a book with a transinfiniteinteger of pages, which contained all the most elegant mathematical theorems in reality. It was sacred duty of every mathematician to steal a glimpse into the book whenever possible, but God made this job exceedingly difficult at times. This thought is underlined by Erdos' calling God the SF, which stood for "Supreme Fascist".

Erdos would often joke that the SF played a rigged game with humanity, much like a sick game show. Whenever a person did an immoral thing, a point was scored against her. When a person knew the right thing to do, but didn't do it, a point was scored against her. Yet, if a person actually DID do the right thing, she didn't score. The point of the game was that humanity couldn't possibly win, so the only way to do well was keep the score against them as low as possible over the course of their lives.